1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for monitoring and/or limiting the use of a connection, subject to payment, between IP clients in a packet-switched connection network.
The present invention also relates to a system for monitoring and/or limiting the use of a connection, subject to payment, between IP clients in a packet-switched connection network.
The present invention also relates to a computer software product for monitoring and/or limiting the use of a connection, subject to payment, between IP clients in a packet-switched network.
2. Description of Related Art
According to the state of the art, in operators' connection networks between IP clients, which have genuinely packet-switched connections, data communications connections can be provided customer specifically. It is possible to require that the customer's identifier and identifier verification data must be received before a customer can be provided with an individuated network connection. The quality parameters can be defined customer specifically. These quality parameters can, for example, define the characteristics of the data communications connections relayed over the individuated network connection. Such characteristics are, for example, the capacity of the data communications connection to be relayed, its delay, delay variation, and the loss and error ratio in the transmission of the data packets. Data communications connections ensuring the quality parameters are charged for on the basis of availability, the quantity of data transmitted, capacity, and/or the duration of the connection.
A drawback of the state of the art is the limited reliability of billing for Next Generation Networks, when the duration of the connection is used to charge for a data communications connection that ensures the quality parameters. The data communications connection between the clients and the signalling link set to monitor the use of the data communications connection are typically separate. In IP networks, data communications connections, such as IP voice connections, are set on the basis of data received over a signalling link, from the direction of the customer. Connection-duration-based billing uses data received from the customer's terminal over a signalling link. Information differing from reality, concerning the use of the data communications connection, can be received from the direction of the customer's terminal, for example, indicating that use of a set IP session has been terminated, even though in reality use of the relevant IP session has not been terminated. When using, for example, the known method disclosed in the network publication “Nat and Firewall Scenarios and Solutions for SIP” by J. Rosenberg et al., SIPPING WG, Jun. 24, 2002, the connection cannot be broken completely, only the granting of quality guarantees can be terminated.
A further drawback of the state of the art in terms of billing is the fact that, in a packet-switched IP network, anyone can form a connection with anyone else, without paying anything for this connection. This requires that the parties know each other's IP addresses. Solutions also exist, in which the operator has defined for or given the clients (unreliable clients) specific IP addresses. In this case, the clients are always treated as unreliable clients. In such solutions, fraud is easy, because after the closing request (BYE) given over the signalling channel, it is entirely possible to continue the connection, without paying the operator anything for this connection time or event. A customer generally uses data communications services in order to gain some benefit, which is not directly proportional to the quality of the available connection and/or to the amount of data transmitted over the connection. At present, billing for a network connection or data communications connection cannot be controlled in such a way as to be in proportion to the customer benefit. Thus, data communications resources cannot be allocated to provide the greatest customer benefit to their clientele, instead the use of data communications resources must be restricted using parameters that are of secondary importance to the customer.
The invention is intended to eliminate the defects of the state of the art disclosed above and for this purpose create an entirely new type of method for monitoring and/or limiting the use of a data communications connection.